Dagmar's Daughter - By Kim Echlin Page 0,7

in watching the sun come up behind her daughter’s curly dark hair falling over the dead birds. Dagmar examined the airiness of each wing, touched through the feathers into the birds’ fine bones across their breasts. Mother and daughter dug little graves at the back of their farm, a row of bird-filled mounds to remind them of this hard dry spring of strange winds. Together they tore bright strips of rags and hung them against the windows of the houses to warn the birds away from their own reflections. When the work was done, Norea held young Dagmar’s face between her large palms and tried to memorize the brightness of her eyes. She wrapped her gaze around this beloved one and worried about what to do about the baby she did not want.

As she pondered, she walked out in the field with Dagmar’s hand in hers, looked at the parched apple trees and said distractedly, If we don’t get some rain soon there’ll be no apples this year. Dagmar stared gravely into the sky. Smurry clouds moved in from the horizon and a great rainstorm soaked the island with fresh water for two days and a night. When it was over they watched the fragrant apple blossoms open before their eyes.

Later in that month of odd weather, Norea remarked, It’s hot for the wild strawberries this year, and the child said, Don’t worry. Something will come of it.

By evening the temperatures had dropped and the low plants on their farm were thick with delicate fruit. After that, Norea tempered what she said about the weather in front of the girl. It was one thing to have a green thumb and another to reshape the sky. Norea watched her free-hearted daughter as if she were a foreign creature and she said to her, You won’t have to run away as I did. All this place is yours when I turn into honey. She marvelled at the girl’s strong mind and averted her eyes when Dagmar planted. It was better not to look, for she sometimes thought she saw new shoots and leaves growing right out of the girl’s fingers.

Norea nudged the old fishbones away from the path up to Moll’s door with her foot. She knocked and when no one answered she pushed it open.

Moll was crouched on the floor inside and said, What do you want?

Norea said, I need to get rid of something.

Moll looked up with blank black eyes. She said, Best babies are merry-begots.

I can’t bear this child. These island people.

Tuck it in a basket, leave it at da’s door. No one has a proper place but makes their own.

He’ll never claim it.

Won’t know breath your way.

Please.

Moll stood to her full height and said, Bring me boiling water.

Norea walked back to her house and put the kettle on. She took Dagmar to Meggie’s house and asked her to watch the child overnight. She went back for the water and talked aloud. Rory, she said into the steam from the kettle, if you’d stayed I wouldn’t be at this. She heard the kettle’s whistle and quickly, to prevent the churning of her own thought, she took the boiling water back to the little shack where Moll crouched, sifting through a basket of sweet-smelling blossoms on the floor. Moll poured out a cup of water, snapped off some of the tansy flowers, stems and leaves, and mixed them in. She waved Norea over to a heap of old rags in the corner and handed her the tea.

Bitter buttons for the path wanderer, Moll said. Do not sorrow when what you lose you’ll never have again.

Norea raised the cup to her lips and drank the hot sweet-smelling liquid. She swallowed and drank again and swallowed until it was all gone and then she waited. The poison spread warm and violent through her body, and terrified she put her fingers into her mouth and tried to get rid of what was not yet down. Her skin beaded in sweat and cramps roiled up from her stomach against her heart and down into her womb. She bent over herself as if she were going to die, then threw up to the side and fell back from the knotting pain that twisted from her insides out. She lay back panting and faint. Then the blood. She did not at first notice it. She was throwing up yellow froth, and desperately she turned on her hands and knees and sagged into a crawling creature. Her